In recent centuries it has become clear that many of the major languages of Ereláe belong to a single family.

The similarity of Cuêzi and Caďinor was noted in ancient times (indeed, In the land of babblers remarks on it, and rehearses the Cuzeians' thinking on the matter; Beretos' conclusion is that it results from the Caďinorians' attempts to imitate Cuêzi); but the extent of the Eastern family did not become apparent until Verdurians became more familiar with Xurnese, and then Axunašin, some two centuries ago.

Over time it was increasingly recognized that these languages were all related; and Caizu, Obenzayet, Eluye-Makši, and Kešvareni were gradually added to the new family (named Sarise, Eastern, to distinguish it from the languages of the western barbarians).

Here are the major branches and subbranches of the family, with representative members. (+ indicates a dead language.)

The reconstruction of proto-Eastern has proceeded according to principles similar to those used to reconstruct Indo-European.

Serious reconstruction has only been attempted in the present century. The first attempt was published by Ružeon in 3442; he and others continued their studies at the University of Verduria (with some assistance from Žésifo and Avéla), culminating in the publication of Dekaši Perëi Řonei (Discovery of the First Language), under the editorship of Ružeon's student Sarileya, in 3473.

The University's effort is highly respectable, but contains serious flaws— most notably an overemphasis on Caďinor and Cuêzi, ignorance of the Čia-Ša languages, inattention to clues offered by minor languages (including Kaini and Ṭeôši), and an occasional overactivity of imagination. This chapter presents my own reconstruction, which given the additional data available and the greater rigor of terrestrial linguistics, must be seen as the most accurate attempt yet to reconstruct the tongue of the Easterners.

Reading about protolanguages in the popular press, one may get the impression that to compare two languages, linguists simply choose some plausible-sounding middle ground for each reconstructed word. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Plausible-sounding rules, varying word by word according to the scholar's fancy, allow the misguided to derive any language from any other, and can be seen in schemes deriving all terrestrial languages, from Swahili to Finnish, from Hebrew; or the Avélan scholar Pirosolom's derivation of Caďinor, Kebreni, Eluye-Makši, Western, Skourene, and Qaraumcán (but not Xurnese, which he considered 'devilish') from Cuêzi.

Linguists rely on the comparative method: searching various languages for regular sound correspondances, positing sound changes to account for them, and then reconstructing the historical ancestor of the compared languages. This is the process which has been used to reconstruct proto-Indo-European (and proto-Eastern); the method can be tested (and has been, successfully) by applying it the Romance languages to reconstruct late Vulgar Latin.

If you apply the method to unrelated languages, you get precisely nothing, which is another check on the technique.

The first step, looking for sound correspondances, can be illustrated by listing the following words in several Eastern languages:

Cuêzi

Caďinor

Axunašin

Obenzayet

Luxajia

bāsi

faucir

šagi

hägia

fàxí

bērede

veredes

šeirvi

häraziz

fèrey

ferêde

vehend

šejiz

haʔäd

fè(tóʔ)

fuāliu

fuelis

weli

halił

fùλu

fuse

futes

šudi

hudiz

fúsé

From these words— and many others; it must be emphasized that the method relies on the painstaking comparison of literally hundreds of words, not just a few— there seems to be some kind of correspondance going on:

Cuêzi

Caďinor

Axunašin

Obenzayet

Luxajia

b/f

f/v

š/w

h

f

It is not enough, however, to state that "an f in Luxajia corresponds to a š or w in Axunašin, a b or an f in Cuêzi, to an f or a v in Caďinor, and to an h in Obenzayet." We must respect the principle—in terrestrial linguistics due to the 19th century German Neo-Grammarians, in Almean to Ružeon and his colleagues— of the regularity of sound change: sound changes are not sporadic, but occur without fail in the proper phonetic environment.

The proper environment in this case may or may not be evident from our small example; but a larger data set (such as the Lexicon) makes it clear: in words which begin with f in Luxajia and an h in Obenzayet, an initial b occurs in Cuêzi before a long a: or ē, and an initial v occurs in Caďinor before a front vowel (i, e). (As for weli, the f was simply lost here.)

We can now reconstruct an initial *f in proto-Eastern for all of these words, which via a regular sound change has changed to b or v in certain environments in Cuêzi and Caďinor. And then we move on to other initials; to the medials; to the vowels... it is a prodigious task.

Special emphasis is laid, in reconstruction work, on comparing paradigms (complete sets of inflected forms), rather than simple words. Correspondences like

lūvāo, lūvēo, lūve

(Cuêzi)

liubao, liubeos, liubes...

(Caďinor)

ruweu, ruwiu, ruwe..

(Axunašin)

lüvala, lüvalaz, lüviz...

(Obenzayet)

are riveting for the historical linguist; almost any word can be borrowed, but the everyday inflections of the language almost never.

From such work we can reconstruct not only the sounds and the lexical items of the protolanguage, but whole inflectional paradigms.

Once a sound change has taken place, it often triggers morphological, lexical, and syntactic readjustments. Sounds may merge, confusing similar words or case endings; different words may come to be adopted to disambiguate them, or paradigms may be adjusted. (For instance, the definite past and present came, through sound change, to sound very much alike in Old Verdurian; the definite past was therefore replaced by the remote past.)

Sound changes may obscure earlier morphological rules and make them unproductive, creating irregular paradigms. For instance, the proto-Eastern pattern of short root vowels in the singular and long vowels or diphthongs in the plural, with a uniform set of case endings, has become confused in almost every Eastern language, so that Caďinor, for instance, has ten nominal declensions where proto-Eastern has just three.

Language is tolerant of a certain amount of irregularity; but often a paradigm will be regularized, approximating an existing regular paradigm, or creating a new one. Cuêzi, for instance, has made the declension of pronouns resemble that of the nouns.

The classical form of such readjustment is analogy: one set of forms is made to resemble another, usually more common set. The first adjectival declension in Cuêzi, for instance, over time absorbed a feature of the second and third, namely the identity of masculine and neuter forms.

Writing tends to standardize a language, as speakers of different dialects write in a standard orthography, and a literary standard is consciously imitated. Philologists bless and curse writing: it is their only record of language in former times, but it also obscures linguistic change. The extreme case is Axunášin, which was written using the phonetic glyphs of ancient times even as the language radically changed. (It uses a morphosyllabic script, but this nonetheless encodes much phonetic information.) The result is that we know Old Xurnese only through reconstructions.

Another major source of linguistic change is borrowing. The most familiar cases are lexical borrowing and loan-translation, seen in the hundreds of Caďinor words which derive from Cuêzi. Once borrowed, of course, the word undergoes the linguistic changes of the recipient language. Languages, especially in prolonged bilingual situations, are also known to borrow syntax, morphology, and even phonetics, to the point of obscuring actual paths of derivation; this helps explain why Verdurian scholars have not recognized the affinity of the Čia-Ša languages to their own.

While the provenance of the Indo-Europeans has been a puzzle for decades, there is no similar mystery surrounding the origin of the Easterners (the Sariloi, in Almean scholarship). Their invasion of Eretald and Xengiman around -350 is described in early Cuzeian, Axunašin, and Wede:i sources (only the last being contemporary accounts). It is not hard to place their homeland in Bolon (= northeastern Xurno), an area outside the sphere of early Monkhayic and Wede:i civilization, but well placed to invade both regions when the time came. No archeological confirmation is available, simply because no archeological exploration of pre-urban sites has been done on Almea; but our understanding of the early location and culture of the Easterns has been confirmed in its broad outlines by the ilii.

By the time of the invasion, the Easterners were familiar with the horse, with bronze-working, the bow and arrow, and at least the beginnings of agriculture. None of these technologies were their own invention; the Kagöt had domesticated the horse, while the other technologies were first developed by the Wede:i. Theirs was the first "barbarian invasion" of the plains; and yet it differed from those which the nomads of the steppes unleashed centuries later on their civilized descendants. The Easterners lived in the temperate forests and grasslands of Bolon, not on the steppe; and they had not mastered the use of horses in battle. The Wede:i describe them riding their horses to the very edge of their enemies' cities, then dismounting to make their attack on foot. Their military advantage was speed and the war-readiness of the entire adult male population.

Much of our information on the Easterners derives from the linguistic reconstruction described in this chapter. Not surprisingly, for instance, there are no reconstructed words for reading or writing: the Easterners were illiterate. Nor are there words for 'city', 'temple', 'bridge,' or other tell-tales of urbanization. More interestingly, there exist only a bare minimum of agricultural terms (and no words for 'plow', 'farm', 'crop', or 'harvest'); while words such as *onkou 'herd', *tsērer 'tend', *yagem 'hunt' bespeak a familiarity with animal-herding and hunting. Probably the Easterners, like some American Indian tribes, would plant gardens (*ktats) to supplement what they could gain from herding, hunting, and gathering. Most likely they had no permanent settlements (and indeed there are no reconstructed words for 'city' or 'town').

A number of religious words have been reconstructed, including *nūmiu 'god', *fakus 'shrine', *nēr and *ɣrem 'holy', *fants 'spirit'. And the name of one god can be confidently reconstructed: *Endānor— the source for the Verdurian Enäron, the pre-Endajué Xurnese Inbámu, and even the Cuzeian Eīledan. No other names of gods can be reconstructed, from which some scholars have concluded that the Easterners were monotheists. But only the Cuzeians, among the ancient Eastern peoples, are known to be monotheists; and Cuzeian religion derives from that of the ilii. It seems more likely that each clan had its own gods, and perhaps occasionally abandoned one god for another; so only the chief of the gods was remembered by all the peoples (and among the Axunašin he did not even retain his rank; Inbámu holds a subsidiary position to Meša).

Quite a few animal and plant names can be reconstructed, including *bēts 'cock', *bōna 'cow', *ksūta 'pig', *feɣends 'deer', *mots 'sheep', *tīpal 'horse', *ures 'bear', *ɣaprou 'goat', *abrēna 'oats', *akrens 'maple', *grēlu 'wheat', *xogre 'barley'; not to mention *ɣolps 'fruit' and *xufs 'egg'. *ɣāti 'pot' and *ɣipam 'boil' point to an acquaintance with cooking. (Naturally all these terms refer to Almean plants and animals, for which I have supplied the closest terrestrial equivalent.)

Environmental terms include *ayti 'pond', *luti 'meadow', *bāruma 'mountain', and *gēlere 'river'; the absence of any common term for 'sea' confirms the inland origin of the Easterners. (Caďinor and Cuêzi adapted *sīwai 'lake' to mean 'sea'; Axunašin borrowed a Wede:i word, go:rtu.) The existence of *rūts 'ice' and *nīkte 'snow' is also suitable for Bolon.

Family terms are numerous: *ɣīra 'wife', *mīdor 'mother', *pīdor 'father', *sādor 'sister', *baredū 'brother', *abor 'grandfather', *nepou 'nephew'; note also *nōs 'wedding', *kawma 'hearth'. The Obenzayet reflex of *ɣīra is ʔïra 'slave', which doesn't say much for position of women among the Easterners; that we can reconstruct *sinor 'mother-in-law' but no term for 'father-in-law' may indicate that the wives got their revenge by dominating their children's spouses. The similarity of many of these words may derive from adding a uniform 'kinship suffix' *-dor to babytalk expressions. (For this reason it has been suggested that *baredū derives from an earlier *bādor. There is however no philological evidence for this reconstruction.)

Words such as *anōr 'elder', whose cognates all name positions of respect, as well as *maks 'master', *mēdor 'noble', *londs 'honor', *ōps 'wealth' indicate that Eastern society was far from egalitarian; *ox 'gold' even suggests what the wealth consisted of. In compensation there was the concept, and let us hope the pracice, of *rāfs 'justice'.

The numbers from 1 to 10, and the number 100 (*sikātu) can be reconstructed; but no higher numbers.

Sound systems of protolanguages are notoriously variable; the failure of the Indo-Europeanists (dealing with the most well-attested of language families) to determine whether there are three series of obstruents or four, and to decide between aspirated and glottalic stops, is a warning against taking the phonology of a reconstructed language too seriously.

As with all else in proto-Eastern, the phonological system represented below is a reconstruction, based on evidence in derived languages. It is a phonemic reconstruction, meaning that this is the set of sounds recognized as distinctive, and capable of disambiguating words. A phoneme generally has several allophones, different means of articulation which will nonetheless be recognized by the language's speakers as "the same sound." For instance, it is widely believed that proto-Eastern l had both clear (l) and dark (l) variants, as they have sometimes diverged in derived languages.

Consonants

labial

alveolar

velar

plosives

p

t

k

b

d

g

fricatives

f

s

x

ɣ

nasals

m

n

laterals

l

approximants

r

Vowels

short

long

high

i

u

ī

ū

mid

e

o

ē

ō

low

a

ā

Diphthongs

aw

ay

ey

oy

Details of articulation are all highly speculative; but it is likely that none of the stops were aspirated, and that the middle articulation was alveolar, as in English, rather than dental.

x is clearly an unvoiced velar fricative. ɣ is more controversial, as can be imagined, given its reflexes in Caďinor /q/, Cuêzi /r/, Axunašin /ɟ/, and Obenzayet /ʔ/. I have taken it as the voiced equivalent of x, /ɣ/— directly attested only in the Čia-Ša languages, but a possible ancestor of all these phonemes (much more so than Ružeon's /ʀ/, or Sarileya's /h/).

(Sarileya adds an ŋ to the nasal series, more for reasons symmetry than for any solid philological reasons. One Verdurian scholar, Nařou, has perfected the symmetry of the system by removing Sarileya's h. But real-world languages are rarely quite this pretty (compare the lack of voiced th in pre-Hellenic Greek, or of voiced gh in German); and the derivation of /q/, /ɟ/, /r/, etc. from /h/ stretches credulity. )

The vowels can be taken as IPA /a e i o u/. The short vowels differed mainly in quantity, but perhaps also in quality; they may have been pronounced as in pot pet pit caught put.

aw /aw/, ay /aj/, ey /ej/, and oy /oj/ are the only true diphthongs. Where w and y occur with other vowels they are consonantal; where other vowels occur together (e.g. *lubeor 'love') they form separate syllables.

(The University's reconstruction differs from mine, in addition to the points already mentioned, in positing a three-way tonal distinction among the vowels (ā â a), and in adding a neutral vowel ə. The former I consider an unjustified echo of Cuêzi, and the latter an ashcan, into which are tossed all the difficult etymologies in Eastern.)

The reconstruction of roots in proto-Eastern reveals some strong patterns, which have been generalized into phonological constraints.

The vast majority of roots are one syllable long; a few are two. (The ending adds a syllable). Roots never contain two long vowels (though a few inflections have long vowels, so the rule does not apply to words).

Most roots begin and end in a consonant: e.g. *dit-, *kad-, *yāl-. Two pure vowels (e.g *ao) never appear side by side within a root.

Initial consonant clusters are restricted to Cr, Cl, Cw, kC, and ts. Medial clusters are drawn from the same set, with the addition of lC, rC, n + [stop], [velar] + n.

Geminate consonants (e.g. *rr) never occur. Triple consonants never occur except finally, as a result of adding the ending-s (e.g. *fants).

Words (and as a corollary inflections) can end in -t, -k, -r, -l, -n, -m, -s, -x, -w, or a vowel.

In what follows changes will be exemplified by Cuêzi, Caďinor, Obenzayet, Axunašin, and Luxajia, representatives of each of the Eastern families, and also the chief languages used in reconstruction of proto-Eastern.

The following abbreviations are used below in the descriptions of sound changes:

sikātu → secath; lāboni → labanis; grelū → grilu
A change of vowel was obligatory when root vowels differed by two steps of height (e.g. bāruma → parena); sporadic if they differed by just one (rugetes → rugites). A long vowel did not change; if there was no long vowel, the second was the more likely to change. An unusual example of both vowels changing is waruns → ueronos. There was no requirement for harmony between root and affixes. The rule was not productive in later Caďinor (as witness such words as maȟila, faliles).)

This section introduces the declension and conjugation classes of proto-Eastern. For each part of speech the classes and their typical reflexes in Cuêzi, Caďinor, Axunašin, and Obenzayet are listed, followed by specific examples. Luxajia is omitted as it has no inflectional morphology.

The examples are given in a two-line format, with English glosses on the second line. For instance:

pE

Cuêzi

Caď

Axun

Oben

*lūbeklove

lūve

liubec

ruwikdesire

lüvaglove

If no English gloss is given for a particular form (as for lūve, liubec above), the gloss to the left should be understood. The proto-Eastern gloss should be taken as a conjecture, a plausible semantic source of the attested forms.

Actual reconstruction, of course, is based on more languages (though those listed are the chief ones used), on very many more words, and on all rather than single forms of those words.

Proto-Eastern has three verb classes (conjugations), easily distinguished by their final letter in the infinitive— k, m, or r. The latter two conjugations have two subclasses each, with minor differences between them.

There are three basic declension patterns in proto-Eastern, commonly called masculine, feminine, and neuter, though there is some controversy over whether they are true genders or not. The chief uncertainty is over how adjective agreement worked in proto-Eastern, and the test cases are those where the grammatical gender differs from the semantic— e.g the "masculine" *mīdor 'mother'. In Caďinor and Cuêzi such words have generally been "corrected" to feminine gender; and masculine and feminine forms of nouns can be traced back to masculine and feminine forms in proto-Eastern (e.g. *makseis 'mistress' / *maks 'master'), which lends credence to the gender interpretation.

But in Obenzayet semantic feminines like mïzr 'mother' take feminine adjectives, so that gender and declension class are separated. And Axunašin does not associate its gender classes with sex at all. It is difficult to decide which of these patterns, if any, reflects proto-Eastern usage. Since proto-Eastern adjectives had three declension patterns each, corresponding to the nominal declension classes, it seems certain that adjective agreement obtained. But whether the classes were identified with sex or not, or how grammatical/semantic clashes were resolved, is not known.
(None of the Čia-Ša languages are inflected, so they are of no use in resolving the controversy. Some of the Sainor languages have five genders (masculine, feminine, animate, concrete, and abstract), but there has been so much rearrangement of the inflectional system, and such likelihood of influence from Lenani-Littoral (with four-gender pronominal systems) that they are not much help either.)

A nominal form in proto-Eastern breaks down into a root, stem vowel, and case ending. The stem vowel indicates both gender and number, and within each gender there are a few different possibilities for stem vowel. Some case endings are uniform across all nouns; some across a single gender; and a few vary somewhat depending on the stem vowel.

Thus there are several declension subclasses within each gender. The table below shows the subclasses, with the stem vowels for singular and plural, and their usual reflexes in the child languages. Following is a set of examples of each subclass.

Each proto-Eastern adjective belongs to one of the three declension classes, identified by their citation form as the consonantal, -es, and -is classes. In addition it will have three separate forms for each case, corresponding to the three nominal genders.

The table below shows masculine forms only. (The citation form for Cuêzi adjectives is normally the neuter (utûto 'bad'); but the masculine is given here to facilitate cross-language comparison.)

Proto-Eastern had three genders, two numbers, and seven cases. All Eastern languages, except those in the Čia-Ša group, have retained the numbers, and most have at least two genders. Our sample languages have retained all three genders (but modern Verdurian has only two, and Ismaîn and Xurnese have abandoned gender entirely).

As noted above, nominal forms can be divided into root, stem vowel, and case ending. The case endings are very nearly uniform within each gender; Verdurian scholars have worked very hard to eliminate the irregularities, and have had the honesty not to succeed. The regularity cannot be coincidence, however.

When the case endings are displayed by gender, there is clearly revealed an agglutinative system on its way to becoming an inflectional one. The uniform dative ending -nu, for instance, was clearly once an independent morpheme.

case

M (s/pl)

N

F

nominative

s/t

u

-

accusative

-

m

a

genitive

ex/ē

ex/ē

ē

dative

nu

nu

nu

ablative

tu

tu

di

instrumental

ko

ko

ru

locative

aw

aw

w

The greater variation in the nominative, genitive, and accusative, which vary by gender and number, is striking compared to the uniformity within genders (and between masculine and neuter) observed in the oblique cases. No doubt at some earlier stage in the language there were just three cases, and the remaining case endings developed from postpositions.

The number distinctions that exist (e.g. the ex/ē alternation in the genitive) can be plausibly assigned to sound changes; almost certainly the reconstructed system derives from an earlier one in which plurality was indicated exclusively by the stem vowel. For that matter, a listing of the singular and plural stem vowels strongly suggests that the stem vowel was once invariable, and was followed by a plural morpheme -y-.

M

N

F

- i

o oy

a ey

r i

u uy

e ey

a ay

i uy

i ya

u uy

In general, the similarities between masculine and neuter suggest that these were one gender at some early stage of the language. (The masculine nouns in -u have become neuter in Caďinor, which suggests that this confusion survived in some form till after dialectalization.) The variation seen in the ablative and instrumental between masculine and feminine (tu/di, ko/ru) is hard to explain; the first perhaps derives from some sound change or vowel harmony rule; the second seems suppletive.

The nominative/accusative distinction is signalled very differently in the masculine and feminine (presence or absence of a morph) and neuter (different morphs). This has led some to posit that proto-Eastern once had a mixed-case system, nominative-accusative for animate (masculine and feminine) nouns, ablative-ergative for inanimate (neuter) ones.

The relative regularity of the proto-Eastern system has been largely lost in the descendent languages, a casualty of sound changes, reinterpretations, and loss of the more regular cases. Only in Obenzayet can one still synchronically distinguish case ending from stem vowel; in all the other languages shown (and all the more so their modern descendants, such as Verdurian) the stem vowel and case ending have merged into a single inflection which expresses case and number.

Each proto-Eastern adjective is provided with three sets of forms, one each for agreement with no
uns of the three genders, and using the case endings for the appropriate gender.

The following table lists, for the three proto-Eastern adjectival classes, the singular and plural stem vowels for each gender; plus the comparative and superlative suffixes.

m

n

f

comp

sup

sg

pl

sg

pl

sg

pl

cons.

-

i

o

oy

a

ey

or

atses

-es

e

ey

e

ey

e

ey

eor

ekses

-is

i

uy

i

uy

i

ya

ior

iksis

The masculine nom.s. -s ending is applied only to the -es and -is declensions, not to the consonantal declension. It should also be noted that the final consonant in the consonantal declension is part of the root: compare nominal *anōr/*anōit, adjectival *sōl/*sōlit; the s.nom. forms of the latter adjective in all three genders are *sōl, *sōlou, *sōla.

I have not given comparative tables of declension here for the adjectives; they would take an inordinate amount of space for very little additional information.

Since such widely separated languages as Caďinor, Obenzayet, and Losainor have comparative and superlative forms, it seems certain that proto-Eastern had them as well; but our reconstructions are more tentative here, since they are not inherited by all languages— Axunašin does not have them, and Cuêzi has only the superlatives (but with a comparative meaning). Moreover there is some puzzling variation in the descendant languages; no one knows, for instance, why the -es adjectives have a comparative -eďes in Caďinor.

All the older attested Eastern languages (Cuêzi, Caďinor, Axunašin) are inflected, with fairly free order; it seems likely that proto-Eastern had the same properties. Adjectives normally follow the noun in Cuêzi, Caďinor, and Obenzayet, and precede it in Axunašin and Luxajia. The usual assumption is that adjectives were postnominal in proto-Eastern as well; but the distribution noted could well be areal (north = postnominal, south = prenominal), leaving the question open for the protolanguage.

Six personal pronouns can be reconstructed, including both singular and plural 'you'. A single pronoun served for all uses in the third person singular— *taw meant 'he', 'she', or 'it'.

No locative forms are shown; none of the Eastern languages which still have a locative (e.g. Obenzayet and Axunašin) have one for the pronouns, and a locative use for pronouns is hard to come by anyway.

Unusually for proto-Eastern, the pronominal accusatives are normally formed by suppletion rather than by inflection. Some of the child languages have tossed out the suppletive forms (cf. Obenzayet lala 'thee', formed on the analogy of tala 'him/her'); others have increased the variation (see for instance the declension of Caďinor seo 'I'). Cuêzi has modified a number of forms to make them conform better to the nominal declensions. For all these reasons the reconstruction of the proto-Eastern forms is more speculative than elsewhere. Very likely the forms were less regular than shown here; and very probably the pronouns changed over time, as well as across dialects.

(The Čia-Ša languages, except for Tei, have entirely reconstituted their pronoun systems.)

There are three conjugations of proto-Eastern verbs: k, m (divided into -am and -em), and r (divided into -ir and -er).

Verbs are conjugated by person and number. The personal endings are similar in all tenses. In the present tense, for instance, the endings all follow the pattern

1s

awV

2s

ewVs

3s

et

1p

Vwmu

2p

Vwsi

3p

Vntu

The vowel V varies by conjugation. The endings are similar in the other tenses, and it is tempting to derive the endings from a previous morpheme sequence

tense + plural + pronoun
e.g. V w mu

Ružeon went so far as to reconstruct the clitic pronouns *wo, *su, *tu, *mu, *si, and *ntu, and claimed that *wo was a worn down form of *sewo, *tu of *taw 'he/she', and *mu of *maux— accidentally shifted to the first person! The speculation here runs well beyond the facts. Ružeon is very free with reconstructed -u's, since Caďinor was known to have lost them. Cuêzi generally kept them; Ružeon explains their absence in the Cuêzi 1s and 2s by the frequency of use of these forms, but this explanation seems ad hoc, and their absence from Obenzayet drives the nails in the coffin. A more careful reconstruction (at the pre-proto-Eastern level) would be *AV, *sV, *tV, *mu, *si, *ntu, where A represents an unknown approximant and V unknown vowels. But even these may well be wrong; sound changes may have rendered the original clitics unrecoverable through internal reconstruction.

Almeologist Nikolai Echternacht has offered the fascinating suggestion that the origin of the verbal endings lies not with the pronouns but with the nominal system. In his view, directional affixes have been reinterpreted as personal:

the 1s *-aw- (and 2s *-ew) relates to the locative ending *-aw

the 1p *-mu to the dative-nu, and

the 2p -si to the ablative*-di/*-tu.

There also seems to be a plural element *w which recalls the nominal pluralizer *-uy.

The third person forms would be a more recent development, related to the 3s pronoun *taw. Note also that the 3s/3p forms have only a single vowel, lacking the persistent *w of the other endings.
Thus:

1s/2s

*-awV, *ewVs

← **-aw-V

1p

*-Vwmu

← **-V-uy-nu

2p

*-Vwsi

← **-V-uy-si

3s

*-et

← **-a-to

3p

*-Vntu

← **-V-nu-to

The tenses remain controversial. It is clear that there were present and past indicative tenses, which can be recovered from almost all the Eastern languages. There were almost certainly many more tenses than this; but there is so much variation in the descendant languages, and so much obvious innovation and reinterpretation, that is is impossible to tell what can be traced back to the protolanguage. Some possible candidates:

The remote tenses; in particular the remote and past anterior tenses in Cuêzi and Caďinor, the subjunctive and potential tenses in Obenzayet, and the future tense in Axunašin. All of these are formed by adding infixes to the verb; and some but not all of the infixes can be plausibly reconstructed in proto-Eastern.

There are two possible explanations for this phenomenon: 1) The creation of infixes, probably by appropriating independent morphemes, remained productive past the time proto-Eastern split into separate languages; so each language has a different set. 2) Proto-Eastern had an even wider set of infixes than possessed by any child language; each language family has inherited only a subset.

The causative in Cuêzi and Caďinor. These have distinct and related forms, and can be plausibly traced back to proto-Eastern; but no other Eastern families have them. It is usually assumed that proto-Eastern had these forms, and only the northern languages kept them.

The imperfect in Cuêzi (plus Curiyan and Sainor) and Obenzayet (and other Naviu languages). There are enough shared similarities between the forms to posit a shared origin in proto-Eastern; again, it is supposed that Axunaic and Central lost these forms.

The passive in Cuêzi. No other Eastern family has a passive, and its manner of formation is not like any other tense; only a few Avélan scholars have argued that it is anything but an innovation.

The intensive in Axunašin. It seems even less likely that this feature can be reconstructed in the proto-language.

Additional conjugations. We are by no means certain that proto-Eastern had only three conjugations. Quite a few Almean linguists have suggested that there are more (usually to form the basis for some irregular verb). I do not find the particular instances convincing, but we have relatively few well-attested verbs in proto-Eastern, and I think it quite possible that we are missing a rare conjugation or two. (Compare the masculine nouns in -as and the neuters in -au, which are extremely rare.)

In the comparative conjugation tables that follow, the same five verbs, one from each conjugation and subclass— *alirek 'live', *rīxam 'see', *lēlem 'see', *bektir 'move', and *klāger 'beat'— are run through their paces.

Quite a few Eastern tenses are formed by adding an infix to the verb root. Each of our inflected descendent languages has such tenses (so that this morphological method must have existed in proto-Eastern), but no one infix is attested in all four languages (indicating perhaps that the proto-Eastern system had not stabilized before the breakup into dialects). Here are two sets of forms attested in three languages, which are fairly likely to have existed in the protolanguage.

The first is a present remote or subjunctive tense:

person

pE

Cuêzi

Caď

Axun

Oben

I

rīx-em-awi

rīx-ināi

riȟ-emai

riš-imoi

thou

rīx-em-ewis

rīx-inēi

riȟ-emes

riš-imiw

he/she

rīx-em-et

rīx-ine

riȟ-emet

riš-imi

we

rīx-em-awmu

rīx-ināmo

riȟ-emam

riš-imomu

you

rīx-em-awsi

rīx-ināzi

riȟ-emus

riš-imozi

they

rīx-em-ontu

rīx-inota

riȟ-emont

riš-imitu

The second is a definite past anterior tense (past conditional in Obenzayet):

The cognates of *esam 'to be' are irregular in most Eastern languages; and it is difficult to reconstruct a wholly regular paradigm in proto-Eastern. Yet a regular conjugation seems tantalizingly close. The present tense conjugation shown below is more or less regular for a first conjugation verb, for instance, except for the alternation between initial *s and *es. Yet it cannot simply be assumed that the initial *e was lost; the Cuêzi and Caďinor 1s and 2s forms should have been *zāi, *zēi / *esai, *esei if the verb began with *e in all forms. And it is likely that the 3s form became *es (rather than *eses or *eset) at an early date.

person

pE

Cuêzi

Caď

Axun

Oben

I

sawi

sāi

sai

zoi

sali

thou

sewis

sēi

seis

zewi

saliz

he/she

eses

ê

es

zi

sahiz

we

esawmu

zāmo

esam

izomu

sahamu

you

esawsi

zāzi

esos

izozi

sahai

they

esontu

zota

sont

izutu

sahäʔu

In the other tenses the general problem is that *esam can't seem to make up its mind what conjugation it belongs to. These forms seem to belong to the first conjugation; but the rest of the Cuêzi conjugation is divided between the second and fourth conjugations, and in Caďinor between the first and second; the Obenzayet non-present forms have all been normalized to the fourth conjugation. Perhaps the most compelling explanation is that *esam belongs to a sixth, lost conjugation, which the descendant languages have fit into the other five as best they can.

Worse yet, in Cuêzi, Caďinor, and Axunašin, *esam seems to have got mixed up with another verb *fuam. In Caďinor this verb contributes the past tenses; in Cuêzi, the imperfect ones; in Axunašin, the subjunctive. The original distinction of meaning is impossible to reconstruct with confidence; but judging from Cuêzi and Luxajia (in the latter fu means 'habit/habitual'), *fuam probably had the sense of 'be permanently or by nature', *esam was 'be currently or momentarily'.

There are patterns to Eastern irregular verbs that allow a somewhat daring recontruction of the so-called simple forms. We find reflexes of these forms in (e.g.) Caďinor and Obenzayet irregular forms, in the abbreviated Axunašin imperative, in certain fossilized expressions in Cuêzi.

Sarileya reconstructed these forms as *-Qx for first person, *-Qs for second, and *-Qt for third, where Q is an element that deletes the previous consonant. Thus for *ktānem she forms *ktānQx, *ktānQs, *ktànQt, and thence *ktāx, *ktās, *ktāt. With an unusual but consistent vowel raising in the 2nd and 3rd persons, this gives Caďinor ctai, ctes, ctet. There are no plural forms.

I believe the -x and -t are interpolations from Caďinor; note that the I.s irregular verbs there have the regular final vowel (liubec → liuo, ctanen → ctai, faucir → fau), and the one irregular III.s form for a verb in -ec is liubec → lius, with the -s that is normal for this conjugation. These consonants also have no reflexes in Obenzayet. The -Q- is also a description rather than an explanation. I therefore reconstruct -V, -s, -0 (that is, no ending at all in the III.s); with the Caďinor forms modified by analogy.

The first of these are reminiscent of the speculative postposed pronouns from pre-Proto-Eastern (*AV, *sV). These forms may therefore be a glimpse into an earlier, simpler morphology, in which only person (and not tense or number) was marked on the verb... and perhaps an even earlier VSO stage of the language, with the pronouns as independent words.

Syntax can be reconstructed by the same methods as words— but with a good deal less confidence, since there are many fewer data points. (For a given sound in a given position, we often have a few dozen words with which to reconstruct the proto-Eastern form. For basic sentence order, by contrast, there is just one datum per language.)

The following table summarizes (with a good deal of simplication, of course) the basic syntactic features of the daughter languages:

Cuêzi

Caď

Axun

Oben

Luxajia

S order

SOV

SOV

SOV

VSO

SVO

Adj / Noun

NA

NA

AN

NA

AN

Gen / Noun

NG

NG

GN

NG

GN

Clause / Noun

NC

NC

CN

NC

CN

Prep / Obj

PO

PO

PO

PO

OP

Verb/ Aux

VAux

VAux

VAux

AuxV

AuxV

Case

nom / acc

nom / acc

relative status

nom / acc

none

Pronouns

pro-drop

pro-drop

pro-drop

pro-drop

required

Negatives

mai (V)

bu-(V)

verb form

(V) hü

čin (V)

Questions

(V)-me

remote tense

jiti + subj.

(S) sahü

(S) gû

On sentence order, we note that all the daughters agree on SO (but in Ereláe, at least, this is almost a universal). The position of the verb is not quite as obvious; but it should be emphasized that the Čia-Ša languages are not at all uniform on SVO; and the general Naviu VSO order is the same as (and thus possibly adopted from) Western— except for Seia, adjoining Xurno, which uses SOV. Thus we may reconstruct SOV for proto-Eastern.

In terrestrial languages, we tend to see the correlations

VO / PO / NG / NA or AN

(modified-modifier)

OV / OP / GN / AN

(modifier-modified)

Obenzayet matches the first pattern; Axunašin matches the second except that it has prepositions rather than postpositions. The others have the 'wrong' S order (that is, the other three indicators pattern together).

Except for S order, the Eastern languages seem to pattern geographically: the northern ones (Cuêzi, Caďinor, Obenzayet) are head-first, the southern ones (Axunašin, Luxajia) are head-last. Again, Seia patterns with Axunašin. It is tempting, then, to view the head-first order as an innovation, and suppose that proto-Eastern was consistently head-last: AN, GN, OP.

On case it is fairly clear that Axunašin has reinterpreted the nominative-accusative system of proto-Eastern (it retains it for pronouns)— and the Čia-Ša languages of course have lost it. Similarly, we can assume that proto-Eastern was pro-drop— but pointing, as we have seen, to an even earlier system with (required) postposed subject pronouns.

About all we can say about negatives and questions is that there is no uniformity: each language has gone its own way, and there is no way to tell if any of the daughter languages has retained the methods of the parent language. The Central bu- and Cuêzi bi- prefixes may point to a morpheme *bux, which it's tempting to link to Obenzayet hü. (Axunašin jiti is a transparent compound of interrogative and demonstrative pronouns from proto-Eastern.)

Here, in the spirit of August Schleicher, is a short text in proto-Eastern. Schleicher got a lot of flak for his fable, but what's linguistics for if you can't have some fun with it?

Giws

rīxet

ɣēda

taway

pīdorex

bōna

bwin

ɣetwet.

boy-N

watch-3s

when

he-G

father-G

cow-N

calf-A

bear-3s

A boy watches as his father's cow gives birth to a calf.

Bwins

net

toɣne

mīdor

lēbenu

ditnu

nuret.

Giws

ridit.

calf-N

born-3s

and

mother

new-D

baby-D

give suck-3s

boy-N

smile-3s

The calf is born, and the mother gives suck to the new baby. The boy smiles.

Bwins

kreksit

toɣne

giws

tawtu

gomu

furet

toɣne

tawa

lūbes.

calf-N

grow-3s

and

boy-N

he-Ab

with

play-3s

and

he-A

love-3s

The calf grows, and the boy plays with it, and loves it.

Taw

tawa

lawres

esam

mērit.

he-N

he-A

beautiful

to be

consider-3s

He considers it beautiful.

Taway

pīdor

ktodko

gones.

"Let

sewnu

kerans

sewis!

he-G

father

anger-In

burn-3s

you-N

me-D

shame

be-2s

His father burns in anger. "You are a shame to me!

īl

bwins

ānuko

sōnko

aliremes!

Tātu

gomu

tawa

kregem

ktānemewis?

that-N

calf-N

1-in

year-In

live-3s-rem

us-Ab

with

he-A

eat

come-2s-rem

This calf will live just one year! Will you come to eat it with us?

ɣiksis

fants

genaw

predi

fētet."

weak-N

spirit-N

clan-Lo

before

stink-3s

A weak spirit stinks before the clan."

Pīdorex

misit

giwex

ɣōbaw

bux

soklintu.

father-G

word-pl-N

boy-G

head-Lo

not

penetrate-3p

The words of the father do not penetrate the boy's head.

Sōns

fākit

toɣne

pīdor

bwinex

gorgia

trankem

lādet.

year-N

leave-3s

and

father

calf-G

throat-A

cut

go-3s

A year goes by, and the father goes to cut the calf's throat.

Giws

fewitet:

"Bwin

gaksie!

Tot

laniwo,

taway

ɣrof

towram

ktāniwos,

boy

speak-3s

calf-A

hide-1s-past

that-A

think-1s-past

he-G

blood-A

pour

come-2s-past

The boy speaks: "I hid the calf! I thought that you were coming to pour its blood,

toɣne

twixiw

diwew

tawa

gaksie."

and

quiet-Lo

place-Lo

he-A

hide-1s-past

and I hid it in a quiet place."

Pīdor

tawnu

kadit:

"Meds,

let

lādemewis

toɣne

yagemewis.

father-N

he-D

order-3s

son-N

you-N

go-2s-rem

and

hunt-2s-rem

The father orders him: "Son, you will go, and you will hunt.

Ures

wiks,

feɣend

wiks;

toɣne

tawa

dōmnu

tragemewis.

bear

seek-simple

deer

seek-simple

and

he-A

home-D

bring-2s-rem

Look for a bear or a deer and bring it home.

ɣay

Endānor

det

tot

tayē

tīnama

eses."

who-A

Endānor-N

give-3s

that-A

we-G

meal-N

be-3s

What Endānor gives will be our meal."

Giws

yaget

toɣne

feɣend

sākit.

boy

hunt-3s

and

deer-A

seize-3s

The boy hunts, and seizes a deer.

Bēws

giwex

kuwidaw

eses:

feɣend

bux

lūbū.

peace-N

boy-G

heart-Lo

be-3s

deer-A

not

love-3s-past

There is peace in the boy's heart, because he did not love the deer.

Wenkaē

lūbor

taway

kawmaw

fuet.

person-G

love-N

he-G

hearth-Lo

persist-3s

A person's love is in his hearth.

Some of the syntactical contrivances here shouldn't be taken too seriously. I used the remote for both future and interrogative meanings, and the simple forms as an imperative. These are plausible uses, but may be incorrect, especially since Proto-Eastern probably had more verb forms than we are aware of.

The negative *bux and the conjunction *toɣne are supported by only two families each (and in each case the families are geographical neighbors). However, it's hardly possible to write a passage without reconstructing something for these!

Glosses: For space reasons glosses are provided for the proto-Eastern root only. The word may have very different meanings in one or more child languages; see the section on each language for meanings.

Naturally we cannot be certain of the meaning of a reconstructed root; the plausibility of the meaning given ranges from near certainty (in cases like *lēbes, where the descendent languages agree on a meaning) to flimsy conjecture (e.g. *sōl, each of whose reflexes seems to have a different meaning). Names of concrete things (e.g. *tīpal 'horse') have fairly certain reconstructed meanings.

The comparative method inevitably leads to a level of semantic abstraction which almost certainly was not present in the actual language. In many cases the root may have had a more specific meaning than the one shown— perhaps identical to that found in one of the child languages— but our methods cannot say what it is.

Citation forms: Nouns and adjectives are given in the nominative singular (for adjectives, the masculine form), verbs in the infinitive, in all six languages. The declension or conjugation class is recoverable from the proto-Eastern form.

An apostrophe appended to a proto-Eastern form (e.g. *ktats', *ures') indicates that the final s is part of the root (cf. gen.sg. *ktatsex, *uresex), and not simply the nominative ending (cf. *dits, gen. *ditex). A superscript m indicates that the final consonant of the root is m not n (cf. *dōns, *dēns, gen. *dōmex, *dēnex).

The Verdurian reconstruction. The reader is referred to the Dekaši Perëi Řonei for the University of Verduria's reconstruction. The first thing which will be noticed is the smaller size of our lexicon: about 350 words, as compared with nearly three times as many in the Verdurian version. Unfortunately the University's count is inflated by scholarly errors. There is much solid scholarly work; but also much overactive imagination. The principle of the regularity of sound change has been grasped by the Verdurians, but not always followed (however, early efforts were worse). The Verdurians also always reconstruct a proto-Eastern root if Cuêzi and Caďinor seem to agree on a word; but many of these correspondences are due simply to borrowing from Cuêzi, or from the Monkhayic substratum in the Plain. Such sloppiness has prevented the Verdurians from noting the phonological restraints of proto-Eastern (e.g. the prohibition on *pt and *ps).

First, you must learn some historical linguistics. (In fact, I used the proto-Eastern project as motivation for learning this subject.) This document has already introduced many of the basic concepts. Some useful books:

Theorora Bynon, Historical Linguistics. I plug this book all over, because it's well-written and tells you what you need to know.
Larry Trask's book of the same name is also very good and covers more up-to-date subjects such as Nostratic.

Calvert Watkins, "Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans", in large editions of the American Heritage Dictionary. An excellent essay on IE and its speakers, plus a fascinating etymological dictionary.

Winfred Lehmann, Theoretical Bases of Indo-European Linguistics. A look at the issues at a more advanced level; contains masses of information about how IE was structured.

Don't assume that a protolanguage has to look like IE! Proto-Eastern has many features reminiscent of IE, because the Eastern family is supposed to be a sort of parallel-Earth version of IE. But a protolanguage can be any kind of language at all. Review the Language Construction Kit to understand the ways languages can vary.

The easiest way is to work forward. Create the protolanguage; then use the Sound Change Applier to apply a set of sound changes to each daughter language. Repeat ad nauseam.

Don't just work on the lexicon; think about morphology and syntax as well. Some of the most interesting language histories involve changes in typology (e.g. from agglutinating to inflecting, or from SOV to SVO). Lehmann's book is good on this: his version of IE is very different in feel from Latin or Sanskrit, and of course these are quite different from French or Hindi.

If you're like me, you'll find yourself working backwards instead. This is much like the internal reconstruction that linguists do on real languages. You have to notice patterns that hint at sound changes and earlier regularities.

Don't try to keep the daughter language static; half the fun is to introduce some irregularities due to sound change, to use analogy to undo some of the damage sound changes did to the morphology, and to discover that what seemed like simple nouns in the daughter language are really compounds in the parent. Some examples:

I had a few Verdurian nouns ending in -ta: šrifta 'knowledge', oresta 'truth'. Then I noticed that nurža 'food' had to derive from something like nuricta in Caďinor. I decided that -ta marked collective nouns in Caďinor— e.g. scrifta is literally 'all that is known', nuricta is 'all what you provide (to eat)'. I like this so much that I changed the Verdurian falahno 'army' (stolen from 'phalanx') to falata, from Caďinor falaȟta, the collective of falaȟ 'soldier'.

I had to work hard to justify the verbal system that Verdurian inherited. It would have been easier if I was willing to change the Verdurian endings! Both Caďinor and proto-Eastern went through several variations before I ended up with the above system, which hints at an even clearer agglutinating system farther back.

Verdurian has accumulated some irregular verbs and nouns, thanks to sound changes from Caďinor. And Caďinor has some of its own. (Barakhinei is even worse. Since I don't foresee anyone ever learning it, I let its verbs get out of hand.)

Is there an Almean equivalent of Nostratic? Not yet, but it's tempting to provide one. Based on their earliest locations, the Easterners were probably related to the Wede:i, the Fei, and the Lenani.